62 fore the sun came up, she oscillated between relief and guilt. She was sorry that she had betrayed my father, who, in the end, throughout her ill- ness, had been everything she could have hoped for. But she had known love a second time in her life, and it had to be spoken. She wanted to be- lieve that love might not be such a terrible sin, but she was terrified that she had taken the wrong side of Pas- cal's wager-that the priests were right about God and his rules. I was sick to think that she had to struggle against her own conscience as well as the disease. Dawn. She looked calm. She drifted away again; her eyes clouded over and her face was serene. Mter some time, she squeezed my hand. "I was in a wonderful place," she said. She described a landscape that was characterized mainly by brilliant light. "My father was there, and some- one else," she said. "The light seemed to be coming from him." She drifted off: then said, "They're waiting for me." I have since read many descriptions of near-death experiences, but I'd never heard of such a thing then. I wish I could say that, like St. Paul when he fell from his horse, I was forever al- tered. But I wasn't.} do think, though, that my mother found peace at the end. My father relieved me shortly after dawn. 1 don't remember how I felt with my new knowledge. In fact, I don't remember him relieving me. The next thing I knew, I was being shaken out of a deep sleep. I went into the bedroom. I thought for a minute that she was already dead: her eyes were glazed and her head drooping on my father's shoul- der, so drained of vitality that it was impossible to imagine any further diminution. But then 1 saw a flutter, a sudden dimming of the eyes. She was forty-nine years old and I was twenty-four. ..-..... W E muddled on-diminished, heartbroken, and angry, for the next few years-my father, my broth- ers, Wick and Charlotte, and I. I don't remember anything about the funeral, although I'm told that I spoke at it. Three whole days are a blank for me except for two incidents' I remember that, on the night of the funeral, I had sex with a member of my extended family on the sofa in the living room. And I remember that, at the wake, Wick sloped around like a bereft Gen- tle Ben, unable to claim the grieving righ ts of a lover. The Millbrooks cancelled their Christmas Eve party that year. They came to our house instead, and our families continued to gather for the next few years. Our Christmas tree that first year had a crooked trunk, and Chris, Mark, and I hung only half the ornaments before we gave up. My father wept intermittently through the night, and we all became weary of the refrain "She was a saint." I ducked upstairs from time to time to do lines. My mother, it was now clear, had been the animating spirit of our Christ- mas gatherings. The carolling was the first ritual to go as the years passed, then midnight Mass. Finally, one year, long after we had expected the Millbrooks to arrive for cocktails, Wick, Jr., showed up alone, to apolo- gize for his parents. "They're not feel- ing well," he said, rolling his eyes. T HE single and divorced women of Buxton went after my father one by one, and all bounced off like birds flying into a windowpane. He was happy to dine, and to dànce, but he would inevitably begin to i("ì, '1 talk about my mother whenever intimacy loomed. I came to find something heroic in my father's mourning, though I didn't necessarily want to watch him weep into his vodka. He had become softer, and far less judgmental, as if he had taken on Merf's role in our lives. Wick, on those rare occasions when I saw him, was affectless "Sometimes I think I'm living with a wmbie," Char- lotte told me one day. He was sinking into a depression. There was talk of the family's debt, and it soon became evident that the money was gone. He and his law firm mutually agreed that he would leave. There was worse to come. Wick was prosecuted for tax delinquengr. For five years, he hadn't paid his taxes; for two, he hadn't even filed. He pleaded guilty ..'",...:pt THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 18, 1999 and received a suspended prison sen- tence and two years of probation-a convictIon that would normally result in the loss of the right to practice law. At his disciplinary hearing before the bar, there was a plea for leniency. He had since paid the taxes, and there were "mitigating circumstances": "A close per- sonal friend" had "suffered from termi- nal cancer," and Wick was described as feeling "responsibility and guilt for the death." According to medical evidence, he had "attempted to expiate his feelings of guilt by failing to file his income tax returns, thus setting himself up to be caught and punished." "On the basis of these facts," Wick received only a public censure and was allowed to con- tinue his legal career. The proceedings were reported in the local newspaper, in enough detail to make it clear to everyone that the friend in question was my mother. The day after the article was pub- lished, my father appeared at my door in Syracuse, looking as if he had been in a fight, his face bruised, both eyes blackened. He had a Rose Mary Woods- style story about his car's having been rear-ended, but I don't think he really expected me to buy it. He slept on my couch for three days. I tried to offer what help I could. Seeing my father in torment, I was ashamed of myself for having taken Wick's part so easily: I had always thought of Wick as a stoic hero, but in his decline and fall he had lost some of his tragic stature. In the court- room, he had, I felt, betrayed my mother, by using her death as his own defense. My father felt humiliated and dis- graced, but once the cuts and bruises of his mysterious accident had healed he showed more dignity than Wick. He took the blame on himself, con- cluding that he had failed Merf in some way. He naturally turned for sym- pathy to Charlotte, his fellow-victim, but after a few months she made it clear that she wanted nothing more to do with our family. T HE Millbrooks' Greek Revival house and its acreage were sold to a wealthy couple, who planned to use it as a weekend retreat from New York. The paintings and prints, the furniture, the silver, and the carpets went into storage. Wick opened a private prac-